I remember a time in the mid-1990s when pagers suddenly appeared everywhere as if by magic. Sure, that ubiquitous analogue device had always existed here and there, dangling from the belt loop of the occasional doctor or drug dealer (what’s the difference between the two, really?), but outside of that exclusive club no one carried a pager. And really, what was the point?

However, sometime by the winter of 1995 something changed.

I remember returning home to New Jersey from college that winter. As I strolled through the Ocean County Mall searching for Christmas gifts I was suddenly struck with an epiphany: everyone was carrying a pager! It made as much sense to me then as it does now: none. But alas, that was the scene as I remember it, December 1995.

Fast forward to late winter/early spring 2009. These days, pagers have bitten the dust, cellular phones are everywhere, and a new adjective is polluting the lingo of everyone in Seattle and beyond. The object of my confused disgust this go ‘round is the word “super.”

Admittedly, moving from pagers to idiotic adjectives is a terrible segue but I do have a point, and that is following the herd is often the perfect recipe for looking and sounding the fool. In the case of the pager the foolishness is obvious. With the adjective “super,” it becomes obvious only after you start paying attention to how overused the word is when people throw it out there to preface everything they say.

“I’m super hungry.”

“She felt super tired last night.”

“He is a super smart guy.”

“It is super bright in here.”

"That sounds super fun!"

And the list goes on and on.

My question: do people realize how useless “super” is when they use it to describe everything? It is like saying spaghetti is “a little al dente.” Come on, people, if something is cooked al dente that means it is slightly undercooked. Does “a little al dente” mean “slightly, slightly undercooked?”

The same applies to “super.” Is a super smart guy someone who is smarter than smart? If you ask me, the whole thing is super stupid.

My point with all this grumbling is simple: people need to stop dumbing down their vocabulary and start thinking before they speak. Talking is fun but listening is even better and something tells me the super obsessed super users don’t even realize their super overuse problem because they don’t listen. Oh, they hear, that’s why the groupthink super overuse is happening, but they don’t listen, and that is what makes this situation endlessly aggravating.